Stunning: The Kazakh model walking the runway earlier this year, left, and in a show on the catwalk in 2005, right

Korshunova's doorman, Mahmoud Nakeeb, 45, said the model seemed happy when she came home at about 4am on Saturday.

'She came in this morning, she smiled, no sense of depression,' he said.

'She was a very sweet girl, always smiling, never depressed-looking.'

Nakeeb said the green-eyed Korshunova was very down-to-earth, often dressed in simple trousers and shorts. He had no clue she was an international model.

'I feel bad,' he said. 'My heart is broken. She was beautiful, beautiful.'

Korshunova wrote a series of heartbroken internet messages about love in the weeks before she leapt nine floors to her death.

Her internet poems and postings reflect an inner torment sparked by a lover, with her admitting she was 'hurt' and 'lost'.

And most tellingly, in one she wrote: 'My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high.'

Korshunova, 20, once called 'the next big thing' and 'fashion's muse of the moment', fell to her death on Saturday afternoon from her ninth-floor apartment in Manhattan's trendy downtown area.

Police said there were no signs of a struggle inside her apartment and on Sunday ruled the model's death a suicide.

Korshunova died from blunt impact injuries, said Megan Cuccia, a spokeswoman for the city's medical examiner.

Horror: People stand by as the model's covered body lies on the New York pavement before coroners, below, arrived to take it away

In her postings on a social networking site, Ruslana never went into detail as to what was happening in her private life - but left no doubt that her love life was her overwhelming obsession.

'Love - this is the essence of life,' she wrote, seemingly in a message to another.

She then stated: 'But you will not give your life to another.'

The Kazakh beauty wrote that love 'blinds', 'sets souls afire', and 'is always the answer' in postings that are part in Russian, part English.

'Do not confuse love and desire,' she wrote in Russian in her most recent posting.

'Love is the sun, desire - only flash. Desire dazzles, and the sun gives life.'

The soulful note warns of the perils of sacrifice.

'Love does not take away from one in order to give to another,' wrote Korshunova. She added: 'I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?'

The supermodel appeared angry in some postings, brokenhearted in others.

'I'm a bitch. I'm a witch. I don't care what you say!!!' she wrote on March 11. 'I know what it is. I know why my other relationships didn't work out, 'cause I'm unpredictable. Why are you afraid of it?'

Beauties: Korshunova, right, with British model Lily Cole, centre and Jessica Stamat at a fashion show in 2006

In January, she wrote: 'It hurts, as if someone took a part of me, tore it out, mercilessly stomped all over and threw it out.'

And in March she wrote: 'My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high.'

Korshunova has been on the cover of numerous magazines including French Elle and Russian Vogue.

She has also been featured in ads for DKNY, Vera Wang and Christian Dior among others and was hailed as 'the next big thing' in a profile in Vogue three years ago.

Korshunova's elite modelling agency, IMG, was grappling with the tragedy yesterday morning and gathering information about her death and work schedule.

'We're shocked and our heart goes out to her family,' said spokesman Zach Eichman.

Onlookers only realised that the model had plummeted to her death when they heard the shocking loud noise of her body hitting concrete at about 2.30pm on Saturday.

'All I saw was something moving out of the corner of my eye, and then boom,' said Steve Metzger, 36. 'It sounded like a bass drum when she hit the ground.'

Star in the making: Korshunova wearing Morgane Le Fay in a 2006 show

A worker for the local electrical company only giving his name as Patrick, 32, said: 'I heard what sounded like a gunshot or a bomb or an explosion.

Ahmed Saad, 22, who has a food cart nearby, said: 'I turned around just as she was about 3ft off the ground and then, boom, she hit.'

The window from which she fell had a balcony, which had construction netting around it that appeared to have been cut.

The model was shoeless and dressed in blue jeans and a purple tank top when she fell to her death.

The 5ft 9in model was discovered in 2003 when she posed for a magazine feature on her German language club in Kazakhstan.

She was signed to Models 1 when booker Debbie Jones spotted the article and tracked her down.

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Supermodel, 20, who threw herself from New York flat was 'on top of the world'